It is common for company and government offices alike to mail to customers and area residents notices that may require a reply by the recipient. Where the reply includes confidential or semi-confidential information it is often appropriate for the reply to be enclosed in an envelope. Where confidential or semi-confidential information is not included in the reply, such as where the reply is a questionnaire or notice of address change, the reply may be in the form of a postcard to reduce postage charges for the reply. Indeed, postal rates for first class mailings differ substantially between letters and postcards. For non-automation mailings the difference in rates is currently $0.14. This provides a significant incentive to utilize postcards for a wide variety of specialized mailings;
It would be desirable for the outgoing mailer, including the notice or statement and the reply postcard, to itself qualify as a postcard to realize postal mail savings for a postcard versus first class mail. A duplex printed postcard using 0.007 inch cardstock has been developed for this purpose and is disclosed in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,667,134, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by this reference. While the '134 patent discloses a double postcard structure that comprises a notable advantage and improvement in the art, it would be desirable to provide a double postcard structure which can be produced using simplex (1 side) printing. Further, in the manufacturing of business forms, it is often desirable to produce a form that holds a label that can be removed and adhered to another surface. For example, the Department of Motor Vehicles for a state may need a mailable form that holds a vehicle renewal sticker, which can be removed from the form and adhered to a recipient's license plate.
Typically, forms having a removable label are manufactured by adhering a release liner to a portion of the substrate of the form and adhering an adhesive backed removable label to the release liner. The problem with such a stacked construction is that the thickness of the form is increased by the thickness of the release liner, the adhesive(s) associated therewith, and the thickness of the removable label. Various problems occur with this design because a portion of the form is thicker than the remainder of the form. For example, the variation in thickness of the form could result in jams and other feeding, processing, and/or handling errors. Further, shipping and packaging time and costs increase because only a limited number of forms can be stacked before the stack becomes unstable and topples over. Also, the additional thickness increases the amount of packaging needed for a given number of forms. Still further, because the release liner and removable label are typically attached directly to a relatively thick and inflexible substrate, it is often difficult to remove the label from the form.